


down in the brooklyn toil

by arabellagaleotti



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1930s, Artist Steve Rogers, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bisexuality, Brooklyn, Gay, Gay Steve Rogers, Gen, Great Depression, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, New York City, Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, anyway read it please, bubbling with homoeroticism, god fucking damn it, honestly just major gay vibes, im a ho for hits, like think gay then triple it, oh no now theres expectation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21615364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabellagaleotti/pseuds/arabellagaleotti
Summary: A story of what could have been.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	1. the beginning

Sometimes, every so often, something special happens. If Steve’s ma was still here, she’d say it’s God letting you know it’s all gonna be alright. But, she’s not here, so Steve just thinks if you keep digging into the shit you’re bound to find something good eventually. 

For example, tonight. Gold and pink slant down from the sky, lighting all of Brooklyn on fire, burning through the smoke and steam that dirties everything to wash it clean for a few simple moments. It looks like cherubs should be singing all in the heavens, like this very scene should be abroil of paint on a canvas hanging in a famous art gallery. 

The door rattles, and a moment later opens and closes with a bang. “Stevie!” Bucky calls out and stomps into the apartment. Steve turns, tears his eyes away from the sight outside the window to the sight of Bucky. 

“Hey,” and all the breath is knocked out of him. Steve can smell the salt on him from here. He’s been working at the docks these past few months, Steve’s seen him down there, hauling rope, laughing with the other men like he is one of them. Maybe he is. They all go out for a drink after work, but Bucky never does, just comes home to him. 

The man in question sits down on their worn, patchy couch, takes off his boots and coat to reveal his pale linen shirt and suspenders with his dark grey trousers. 

“How’d you go today?” he asks, and stops by to look at Steve’s work set up on the beat-up desk they found on the street. Steve’s been working for a comic strip lately. Bucky always likes to read them over when he gets home.

Steve comes over and stands next to Bucky. “I got the next two done. They're pretty good.”

“They’re great, Stevie,” Bucky says softly, eyes on the paper. 

“Yeah, well,” Steve shrugs it off. 

Steve has an alternate reality, one where Bucky loves him in more of a way than brothers do. In this reality, their apartment is not just because this is the Great Depression and why would they both pay separate rents? In this reality, everyone knows who they are to each other, no dames even try to take Bucky dancing. In his reality, Bucky never goes with them. 

“Wanna get dinner at Rosie's?” Steve suggests.

“Yeah, alright,” Bucky says, and grabs his coat again. 

Rosie’s is a nice place, small, local-owned, by this real nice woman who’s come from down south. The food is cheap enough, their only unnecessary expenditure is for one meal a week, and it's worth it. 

Life is hard with the depression. Steve works, Bucky works, everyone works if they can, day in, day out, just to get enough money to live. They make an alright living by themselves, better than some folks, Bucky does most of the traditional work, and Steve draws, and works as a librarian, and part-time at the bakery down the street.

But Rosie’s is the only place where all that doesn’t touch them. They have their seats, right at the end. There’s a chip in the bar from when Bucky smashed his cup, and a scratch from Steve’s crutches, that time he rolled his ankle. This place is as much them as their apartment. Steve drinks his coffee, and watches Bucky eat his egg drop soup.

In his reality, they would be giggling like the sweethearts in the corner. They would hold hands and stride out onto the sidewalk when they are done and live their lives with pride.

But this isn't his reality, so they eat in silence, like men are meant to do. They walk out the door when they are done, waving to Rosie behind the counter as they do, and step out onto the street. Steve makes a joke and Bucky shoves him on the shoulder. He feels like a boy again, when his reality was just a fledgling daydream.

The sun is going down over the horizon in layers of red and orange, burnt sienna and blood, Steve stares out west and something in his heart breaks. To be here, right now, with Bucky, with Brooklyn, with 1935. It’s the most incredible series of coincidences he's ever experienced. 

They get back up to the apartment, and Steve _ cannot _stop staring. The artist in him aches for his paints, but he ran out long ago and they don’t have money to get more. 

Buck turns around and sees him staring. “Good sun tonight,” he says, and opens the ice box. “Wanna sit out on the escape?”

Steve just smiles and opens the window. Bucky joins him on the grated metal a moment later with two beers in hand. Steve shuffles forward and sticks his legs out to dangle over Brooklyn. There's a few cars on the street, and if you look straight down, you can see the hats of passersby below them. Bucky hands him the glass and Steve lifts the cold lip of it to his own and takes a sip. He doesn't really like beer, to be honest, especially not the piss-poor stuff they have to get, but Bucky does, so Steve drinks it with him.

There’s silence, just for a moment, and Bucky is mulling something over, Steve can tell.

“What do you think the future will be like, Steve?” Bucky rasps, finally. 

Steve thinks, and swallows another mouthful of the piss Bucky calls beer. “I dunno. People say they’ll be flying cars and all of tha’. I think it’ll be just the same. The people will be, anyway.”.

Buck nods and swallows in Steve's peripheral vision. “I agree, Stevie,” he says, and puts down his beer in the space between them, keeps his hand there. 

Steve puts his beer down too, and lays his hand on the metal as well. So, so close to Bucky’s. Steve slips away to his alternate reality for a moment, where he would take Bucky’s hand in his and hold in there while they watched the sun go down over their city. Steve stares at it for a moment. His is pale and veiny with long, calloused painter’s fingers. Bucky’s got shorter fingers, but he’s tan and his are just as calloused from his work at the docks.

“I guess I’ll see you then, Buck,” Steve says, and slips into his alternate reality, where Bucky would kiss him right about now. He turns his head, and watches Bucky laugh.

“See you there, Stevie,” he repeats and the glow of the sun is highlighting him in slow, orange fire so perfectly Steve almost cannot believe that Bucky has not been sent down by God, as his ma would say.

And the sun finally slips over the horizon.

And their hands never touch.

And Steve still drinks the beer he doesn't like.

And people still pass by under them.

And the world turns slowly, and ticks into another second of another day that Steve's reality is not _ the _ reality.

Eventually Bucky gets up and goes inside to light the lanterns and candles, since the electrics went out one day and haven't been on since.

And Steve sits out her for a moment, drains the last of his beer, and watches the lights flick on. Then he goes inside. 


	2. the end

Bucky goes off to war, and Steve follows him all the way to Italy. 

On the way, he meets Peggy in muggy, taffy-sweet New Jersey. Peggy is ...well, she’s like Bucky and so unlike Bucky it makes his head spin. They’re both bold, headstrong and tough. But Peggy is who he’s allowed to love. 

He likes Peggy. Which is strange, because he’s never liked anyone other than Bucky. But he likes her. And  _ she _ likes  _ him _ , for some strange reason, the scrawny, asthmatic, witty piece of shit from Brooklyn. Her, the brass, red-lipped, brazen brunette from England. 

So yeah, he kisses her, his second ever kiss. He means it, everything he says, on the way down. He’ll never love anyone like he loves Bucky, but she’s the closest you could get. 

—

He wakes up, and almost thinks he’s back at home with Bucky again, just for a moment, he forgets about everything. About the war, about the ice. With the radio on, and the light slanting through the window, and the softness of sleep, it feels like Saturday morning. Steve refuses to open his eyes at first, just to preserve the moment, but then it all crashes down on him, and he remembers. 

He slides his legs over the side of the bed, and thinks for a moment. The words on the radio are less muffled now, he can understand them. 

Then the door opens. A woman comes in. but she's … wrong. You can see her bra through her shirt, her tie is weird, too fat, her hair is wrong and, and...everything is wrong!

“Morning,” she said gently, and closes the door behind her. “Or should I say afternoon?”

“Where am I?” He asks. This isn't right. 

She smiles, and opens her mouth to spit another lie. 

This  _ really _ isn't right. 

—

  
  


“Look, I'm sorry about that little show back there,” the man in black tells him, “but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”

All Steve can see are the spinning phantoms of light and sound and...advertisements all around him. It takes a second for him to blink all that away. He answers on autopilot but manages to tune in for the rest of the man’s speech. 

“You've been asleep, Cap. For almost 70 years.” The man tells him, and Steve knows he isn't lying. He can't be. 

  
  


\--

He gets given a folder on … practically everything that’s happened since 1945.

There’s lots of great stuff, like the internet, and vaccines, and the television in sound and colour and HD, whatever that means.

And he’s happy for it, really, and he loves it, all the change human beings have made, all the social progress and justice that has been served. 

Then he has to stop because he realises Bucky would have loved this new time more than he ever could. It feels like a gut punch. Half because he’s dead, the other half because he nearly  _ forgot _ . He won’t forget that expo, that light shining out from his eyes, they way he talked about it. 

That was the real night everything started unravelling, even if he didn't see it then. Steve thought that going to war was brave. He was wrong. Now, he’d give everything, anything to be back there, not stranded in the future where everyone and everything he knows is dead. 

But, not everything is. The people are still here, clinging to Brooklyn like weeds in the pavement. He finds out that there's a real name for people like him now, that the world has changed in a way he never thought it would. He finds out that they’re allowed to  _ get married _ now and nearly cries in the silence of his SHIELD-issued room. 

If he listens hard, He can nearly hear Bucky again, the clink of bottles, the bang of the door, it’s like he’s coming home again.

But he never did come home, did he?

Neither did Steve.


End file.
